Updated M/W/F

Black Friday Ops 2012: Online and In-Progress

“I don’t understand why you’d go out to stores tomorrow when you could be at home with family. And by ‘Family,’ I mean ‘Amazon Prime.’”

–Max Scoville, host of The Destructoid Show

My Black Friday and autumn deal hunting this year has been entirely online, and that means as of this writing it still hasn’t ended. There are a lot of great brick-and-mortar deals out, but nothing for which I, in my current situation, would stand in line in the cold at 4am.

I was considering picking up a few things, but what’s funny is that everything I might have grabbed was either matched or beaten by an online deal. The two main things I was eyeing were, seemingly like clockwork for the last few years, Assassin’s Creed and Need for Speed, each for around $35. Just one of the online sales I noticed for both was from Microsoft’s own store, offering each game for $25. That was along with Dishonored, Borderlands 2, what have you. I think Amazon is still price matching them too. Amazon of course has been the prime killer of brick-and-mortar Black Friday for me this year, really steeping up its deals into near-Steam territory.

The thing is though, I think I’m pretty much done buying full retail games for the year. I’ve only bought around half a dozen in all of 2012 (at full price). So far the only full retail console game I’ve picked up amongst these sales has been a $30 copy of Persona 4 Arena from Amazon which I think was a price match with GameStop’s deal. The only other one I’m even thinking of getting before the end of 2012 right now is Far Cry 3 because of its recent glowing reviews, and I don’t even think I’d have time for it.

My entire gaming schedule for the rest of the year is pretty much booked. Between Zero Escape Virtue’s Last Reward, Kid Icarus Uprising, and Xenoblade I’m pretty much occupied for December. Any other big games I bought would probably get put on the backlog until next year if not indefinitely.

Actually, when it comes to Steam sales I have a new rule: When I’m thinking of buying a game, I ask myself how long it will be until I actually find the time to play that game, and how many more Steam sales there will probably be before then. Too many times have I bought a game on Steam only for it to show up on sale at lower prices several times before I’ve even gotten around to installing it. This is why I’m passing up all the deals on Max Payne 3 (as I type this it’s $15 on Steam).

That brings me to the other reason I’m not driving all over the place this year – nearly everything I’m grabbing deals on is for PC. Brick-and-mortar Black Friday ain’t nice to PC gaming. Even the stores that actually still sell boxed PC games that aren’t Blizzard titles, like Best Buy or Target, never include them in their “multiplatform” sales (after another quick check, GameStop apparently does). I thought about running to one of these stores that’s offering Diablo III for $35 but decided to instead wait for the inevitable Steam deal for Torchlight II. For some reason the latter game’s demo just grabbed me.

Being so low on full retail purchases this year, nearly my entire Steam sale shopping list right now is for indie games. As of this typing I’ve already picked up The Walking Dead and To the Moon. I’m holding out for flash or daily deals on Hotline Miami, FTL, Mark of the Ninja, and Torchlight II. I’ll probably wait until after Christmas to post a full haul.

BULLETS:

One place that’s being a bit forgotten in these sales is GameFly. Their PC deals in particular are matching a lot of Steam’s.

I played through Dishonored pure stealth but now I see that people have made the guns-blazing approach look equally, if not even more cool: http://t.co/OvgN4s9m

By the way, Dishonored was in my opinion one of the best-made games this year and as of this typing is $25 on Amazon for all three versions.